The Walking Dead Director Marks 10th Anniversary of the Show’s Most-Watched Episode: “I’m Shocked at What We Got Away With” (Exclusive)

The Walking Dead‘s season 5 premiere proved there was “No Sanctuary” for Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and the survivors. The episode, written by Scott M. Gimple and directed by Greg Nicotero, saw the group fight their way out of Terminus after being rounded up in a train car and nearly slaughtered by cannibals. Believing “you’re the butcher or you’re the cattle,” Gareth’s (Andrew J. West) family arrived at Terminus seeking what was promised on signs leading down the tracks: “Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive survive.”

But not all who arrived survived. A feral Rick, who warned the Termites were “screwing with the wrong people,” led a violent revolt when the exiled Carol (Melissa McBride) returned and took aim at Terminus. And just in time: a butcher was moments away from taking a baseball bat to Glenn’s (Steven Yeun) head and slitting the throats of a gagged Daryl (Norman Reedus), Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), and Rick over a trough already flowing with blood.

For all of its shocking kills and relentless brutality, the episode ended in a tender embrace between best friends Daryl and Carol, and Rick and Carl’s (Chandler Riggs) reunion with baby Judith after she was saved by Tyreese (Chad Coleman). Rick’s survivors then left the burning Terminus to rot, and in a post-credits scene, Morgan Jones (Lennie James) came across the sign that Rick changed from “Sanctuary for All” to “No Sanctuary.”

The episode, which premiered on October 12, 2014, still ranks as one of the show’s highest-rated episodes among fans and remains the most-watched episode of The Walking Dead‘s 11-season, 12-year run on AMC.

The season 5 premiere delivered series-high ratings with 17.3 million viewers and was watched by 11 million adults in the coveted 18-49 demographic. AMC reported at the time that an estimated 22 million viewers in total tuned in to the episode when accounting for time-shifted playback, making “No Sanctuary” the most highly-rated episode in cable television history.

“It was one of the most gratifying experiences that I’ve ever had,” episode director Greg Nicotero exclusively told ComicBook during an interview for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol. “I remember sitting with Scott Gimple and talking about the trough sequence and putting in the baseball bat as a tip to Negan’s impending arrival a couple seasons later.”

Before Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan brought his barbwire-wrapped baseball bat down on Glenn and Michael Cudlitz’s Abraham Ford in the even more shockingly violent season 7 premiere in 2016, also directed by Nicotero, “No Sanctuary” pushed the boundaries of the horror that audiences came to expect from AMC’s adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comic book.

Looking back at the fifth season opener 10 years later, Nicotero reflected fondly on what are “probably the most harrowing first 10 minutes of an episode, and we got away with it.”

“I mean, I’m shocked at what we got away with,” Nicotero added. “We shot that episode in nine days, 10 days. I don’t even know how we did it, but we did it. And it really was just a great experience seeing all those stories applied in that particular episode.”

“[‘No Sanctuary’] and ‘No Way Out,’ the Alexandria invasion, Night of the Living Dead episode, I think those are two of the strongest of the series,” said Nicotero, who has been with The Walking Dead since the very beginning in 2010. Fans seem to agree: The season 6 episode “No Way Out” is ranked just behind “No Sanctuary” on the list of the best-ever episodes of The Walking Dead.

As AMC Networks’ then president Charlie Collier said in 2014: “The Walking Dead is one of those increasingly rare shows today that can command a live audience not significantly cannibalized by time-shifted viewing. Who would have thought that cannibalized television could be curtailed by cannibal-ized television?”

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